Social
Spaces

Our Social Spaces collegues Virginia Tassinari and Nik Baerten were part of Designing household energy practices. A “non-conference” bringing together designers, companies and academics “.…beyond awareness raising and formal education for sustainability, how could the affordance of products support new and more sustainable ways of living? After giving visibility to energy flows, how can design help to rethink the basic interactions with our domestic environment to scripting practices that requires less energy?” More information on this event, you can find here.

It has been an exciting week with the Cumulus conference coming to Genk. I will report on this conference more thoroughly soon, but first I want to congratulate our collegue Virginia Tassinari that she has been elected to be part of the Cumulus board. Two times a year she will, together with designers and thinkers all over the world, meet and exchange practices and knowledge.

Wim Dries, the new mayor of the city of Genk – where our research group is situated – organized a speech for some leading persons in the factory building of car brand Ford. The factory was the location for an official event of more than 550 persons, an ideal space for a speech about work and business. It is also an important statement by the mayor to bring all these important people to Ford, because there has been some discussions going on about the future of the organisation in Genk.

The mayor used the multitouch table we have been designing/rethinking with Z33 and EDM (University Hasselt) for some years now in the framwork of an EFRO research project, under the name ‘Creating Spaces‘. It was nice to see our table “at work” in this different context.